


The Waiting Statue

by incensuous



Category: Mythology, Original Work, Sự tích đá Vọng phu | Legend of the Waiting Statue (Folk Tale), Vietnamese Folklore, Vietnamese Folktale, i really have no idea - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brother/Sister Incest, Canon Incest, F/M, Folklore, Happy Ending, Incest, Older Brother/Younger Sister - Freeform, Protective Siblings, Reincarnation, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love, Siblings, Vietnamese Folklore - Freeform, Vietnamese Folktale - Freeform, i really choose the best things to write for dont i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incensuous/pseuds/incensuous
Summary: Based on a Vietnamese folktale: the "Waiting Statue", a real life natural rock formation in Vietnam, resembles a woman holding a child, looking out over a cliff. The myth involves a brother who mistakenly thought he'd accidentally killed his sister and runs away in fear. Many years later, he settles down, and finds out his wife was his sister all along. Guilty, he leaves again without explanation, and his wife stands and waits for him for so long, she turns to stone.“I’ll wait for you.”The words sit heavy in Văn’s chest, as if the very anchor of his ship had been dropped onto him. He looks into Thị’s sweet face and their baby’s shining eyes, and musters one last smile, before boarding the boat.He tries not to let his voice falter as he calls, “I’ll miss you.” It is the truth, and the only goodbye he can manage.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, To Thi & To Van, To Thi/To Van
Kudos: 12





	The Waiting Statue

**Author's Note:**

> For more of a primer on this myth, you can visit my tumblr: https://incensuous.tumblr.com/post/190956840915/the-waiting-statue-folklore  
> 

__

_“I’ll wait for you.”_

The words sit heavy in Văn’s chest, as if the very anchor of his ship had been dropped onto him. He looks into Thị’s sweet face and their baby’s shining eyes, and musters one last smile, before boarding the boat. 

He tries not to let his voice falter as he calls, “I’ll miss you.” It is the truth, and the only goodbye he can manage. 

He watches their waving figures grow smaller and smaller on the shoreline, until he can no longer see them through his tears. 

He faces the glare of the morning sun then, wishing it were hot enough to burn away his guilt and shame. 

Văn had committed a grave sin, and he resolved to take the secret with him to his grave, if only to protect Thị. He had loved his sister. His blood sister. And she had loved him back. 

When he found out Thị had been his sister all along, it felt like the first time he’d slipped and fallen overboard, the water closing around him. 

He didn’t know how to tell her, and the terror of her finding out their crime choked him. He wouldn’t be able to bear the look of disgust on her face. Or even worse, hatred. 

And so, he ran. He ran away from his love all over again, because of his cowardice, and prayed his wife, his sister, would come to her senses and find someone better than him. 

He prayed for her to learn to hate him, after all. He had never deserved her from the day she was born, even as he knew he’d never love another woman as he did her. 

Văn feels so small, on his boat in the ocean. A small cowardly man, controlled by fear all his life.

. . .

The horizon is still, empty as always. 

Thị purses her lips, fighting the resentment. It had been years since Văn left and never returned from his voyage. 

The first few days, she hadn’t been worried. He’d gotten stuck in storms or at another village for a week or two. But he’d always come back. 

When it turned into weeks, she felt despair slowly sinking into her. She never cried in front of Binh, reassuring him to be patient for daddy to come home, but once he had been safely tucked away to bed, sound asleep, she wept into her pillow at night. 

She has pondered it over and over again, questions looping endlessly in her mind. Why had Văn, the most loving man she’d ever known, left her and their son all alone? How many people would leave her, just as her brother did so many years ago?

Her neighbors, friends, everyone told her he must have died out at sea. She knows it isn’t true, it cannot be true. If Văn, her beloved, had left this world before her, she would have felt it. 

Each day, she feels herself being called to the cliff. She prays and hopes the stars in the sky would carry her words out to her husband. “I’ll wait for you,” she tells the night. She’s lost count how many times she’s said those words, but it is a promise she’d engraved into her soul. 

She rocks Binh gently on her hip, and keeps her face turned to the horizon. 

The moon hangs high above and her eyelids begin to droop. Binh is sound asleep in her arms. She usually returns home by this hour, but this night feels different somehow. There’s a difference in the salt in the air. She can’t turn back now, not when _he_ feels so close. 

As the red sun breaks the line of the horizon, Thị blinks her eyes to look past its glare. She feels awake and asleep all at once, her legs and feet seem so stiff. 

When the ocean comes back into focus, she exhales painfully. 

It is empty. 

With her last breath, she reasons, she could just rest her eyes for a moment. 

_Just a moment…_

. . .

Văn finds a small sleepy port, a town just as small as the last one. It had been a week since he last stepped foot on land. 

He sells what little fish he was able to catch, and buys what little food he is able to afford. When the merchant, sleeping baby slung across her back, hands him his purchases, he catches a glimpse of her face and all he can see is his wife’s face—his sister’s face. He gasps sharply, and she gives him a strange stare before continuing her business. 

Embarrassed, he leaves hurriedly. 

Why is he surprised he saw Thị’s face in someone else’s? Her face is all he sees on the boat, why should it be any different on land?

Each night, he fell asleep, finding her face in the stars. Each morning, he awoke, finding her smile in the rising sun. In the clouds, he could make out Binh’s toothless grin. He wept until his body had no water left over. 

It had been years since he’d left, and equally long since he’d made his boat his meager home. 

He is not sure if it’s his mind deteriorating or simply time stealing away memories, but even though Thị’s face is burned into his consciousness, he finds it harder and harder to focus on the details. He’s forgotten which side her beauty mark was on. 

His body is always in pain; nowhere specific, just in every muscle, every bone, he feels the ache of being ripped apart from Thị. 

Văn wonders if Thị feels this hollowness as strongly as he does. 

Night washes over the sky, and he tries to find peace in sleep, but there is no more peace for him. He sees fleeting dreams and he never understands them, or remembers them for too long. 

“ _I’ll wait for you._ ”

The words startle him awake. He lurches upright, breath heaving. He’d heard Thị’s voice so clearly, as if it was the day he’d left. 

His entire body is trembling with pain now, the ache licking at his limbs like flames. Văn’s mouth falls open heedlessly to let out a choked sob. 

He’s shivering as he forces himself to stand. Barely thinking, he works to pull his anchor, and hastily pushes off from the dock. He stares out to the horizon, but all he can truly see is her face.

_Thị, how could I have left you?_

His ears are pounding, and he doesn’t notice the clouds approaching until it has already blocked out the moonlight overhead. The waves swell and fall, and he can feel the coldness set in his lungs, before the water even crashes over him. 

* * *

_“I’m so sorry. I’ll find you again, no matter how many times it takes.”_

_“I’ll always wait for you.”_

* * *

“Travel for me when you grow up, will you? See the world.”

“What do you mean? You’ll come with me,” Văn insists desperately, clutching her small hand as he sits on her cold, sterile hospital bed. It feels thinner than he remembered it. 

It reminds him of when he first held her hand after their parents brought Thị home, and he was initially skeptical over getting a new sibling. But after the first handshake and a sleepy grin, they’d been inseparable. 

Thị smiles her sweetest smile, the one she always saved for Văn as their parents would point out. “Yeah, I will. It’ll be fun,” she promises hoarsely. 

. . .

By the time Văn graduated college, he travelled often, carrying Thị’s ashes with him, scattering them in the most beautiful places he could find.

His parents suggested he visit Vietnam, so Thị could enjoy where they had grown up. 

When Văn steps off the ferry, he finds himself in a small seaside town, busy but unused to tourists. After hours of wandering, he ends up at a pristine beach and opens the ceramic jar he’d brought with him. 

He presses a kiss to it, as he says goodbye to yet another part of her ashes. The black specks flutter in the wind before meeting the ocean and he watches them float away. 

Finally, he turns away from the water, and something in the cliffs catches his eye. When he looks up, he feels a cold chill run down his spine. 

“Thị?” Her name falls out of his mouth before he can catch himself. 

He stares longer, and he’s too far away to make out her face or even any features, but he would recognize her anywhere, and he _knows_. 

In a graceless scramble, he heads to the opposite side of the cliffs to find a way up. It must have taken him no less than an hour but it all passes by in a blur, and he’s panting, but she’s right there, he has to hurry and—

The breath is knocked out of him. 

He was so certain he’d seen her, but in front of him is no woman at all. It’s only… a pile of rocks. 

“I must’ve gone mad,” Văn laughs bitterly, blinking back tears as he walks closer to the stones from behind. He felt so sure, he hadn’t stopped to think and realize it wouldn’t have made any sense. Thị was gone long ago, and she certainly wouldn’t be here on top of some cliff in Vietnam. 

The shock and joy recedes from his mind. He sighs heavily. “She’s dead,” he reminds himself, again. “Too soon, but she’s dead. Maybe she’s sending me a message.” He isn't particularly spiritual, but he’d like to hope there is an afterlife, at least for Thị’s sake.

His hand reaches out before he even realizes what he’s doing, and touches the rock formation on what could have been a young woman’s shoulder. 

“Văn?”

He shudders, eye shut, inhaling the salty ocean breeze. “I can even hear her voice,” he murmurs. 

“My love!”

His eyes snap open and it _is_ her, his beautiful sister; her eyes, her cheeks, her dimpled smile, watery and effervescent, shining at him. 

“Thị!” he cries out, arms automatically wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her close. This time, it feels too real, yet he can’t breathe, he doesn’t want to—if he breathes, if he even speaks, what if she disappears?

“Husband,” his sister pleads, “why did you never return? We have waited so long for you.”

 _That_ startles him. “Husband?” he gasps, pulling back from her. “… Thị, don’t you recognize me…? I’m your brother.”

Her eyes are wide as she searches his face. “My love, no tricks. I’m too weak for your humor right now.” 

His thoughts are swimming until he feels a small hand tug at his shirt. 

“ _Ba!”_

 _Dad?_ his mind wonders. 

“Ba!” The hand is more insistent, and he stares down at the child sat on his sister’s hip. 

“Văn, your son has missed you so much,” the person who should be his sister murmurs. 

He _knows_ his sister died when she was young, but their faces are nearly identical. He can’t think of this woman as anyone but his sister. She sounds like her, smells like her; if his sister had lived, this is the woman she would have become. 

“My son?” he croaks. 

She turns bleary eyes on him. “My love, you’re scaring me, please tell me you’re only joking…”

“I…” He backs away. “I don’t know what you mean,” he finishes, brokenly. “My name is Văn, as you called me. You seem to recognize me, and you… look just like my Thị, my sister. But she died when she was fourteen.” He places a gentle hand on top of the child’s head, as he stares in confusion at the boy. 

His sister— _the woman_ is quiet, before she takes a step forward to be closer. “You… look exactly like my husband, exactly the same as the day he left.” Her face crumples. “We’ve waited so long and I was _sure_ you were him, but you don’t recognize me, your wife, and you don’t recognize your son… This is a cruel joke the universe has played on me. First my brother, then my husband, and now when I thought you came back to me…”

Her tears fall freely from her eyes and she sobs quietly, looking away from him. 

Her pain, her sorrow, is so familiar; it reaches straight into his heart and he knows what he has to do. His arms reach around small shoulders, gathering her to him, in a way that feels familiar but he doesn’t know why. He tilts up her chin and shushes her gently before pressing a sweet, gentle kiss to her salty lips. 

Her lips tremble as she shudders against him, and he feels as if he’d just come up for air after being underwater his whole life. 

Memories, that are and aren’t his own, come to the surface and he floats amongst them, wading through new overwhelming emotions. He remembers a childhood paralleling the one he actually lived, yet the setting was different. 

His sister was still sweet, he still adored her, and they were still close, but instead of her dying from leukemia, he remembers a slipped knife from his hands, the sugarcane in the other, and the absolute horror washing over him. Then he remembers running, running, running long enough his feet bled when he stopped and the tears never stopped either. 

His sister’s face, as she is now, comes to him then, but she’s smiling, exuberant like when he’d promised her a piggyback ride, except he’d promised her something else—something more important… a ring. And then, he feels a moment of sickening dread crawl up his throat, visions of a deep scar underneath long dark hair, before diving headlong into a vast, blue, blue emptiness. 

As he slowly leans back from the kiss, and opens his eyes to look into her face. Her eyes flutter open before she gives a deep pained sigh. 

“Văn… I’m so sorry. I knew. I always knew. But I loved you so much, I couldn’t tell you.” She clutches at his shirt. “The world has kept you from me long enough, and I understand now. No matter how many lifetimes pass by, I will be your sister, and you my brother. I will always love you, and I would never wish it any other way.”

He softly inhales, relief and euphoria crashing over him like the waves that took him away from her, voice crackling as he says her name in a way he’s never said it before, “… Thị?”

“Yes?” she replies without hesitation, bright eyes glimmering up at him. 

“… I’ve come home,” he tells her.

Her lip wobbles all over again, and she gulps down her tears before nodding. 

“Yes… yes, you have.”


End file.
